The Jonathan Haidt-pilled among us shouldn’t celebrate Australia’s social media ban for teens just yet. 

New evidence suggests that the ban has neither gotten teens off social media nor changed the culture around its use.

The ban

imposed few practical costs on teenagers who wanted to continue using social media: 75 percent described circumventing the restrictions as easy or very easy. … Among teenagers still using banned platforms, 52 percent gave a social reason, most often that their friends were still on the platforms or that they feared missing out. 

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A new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report contains a startling fact: it’s cheaper to ship phosphate rock to Louisiana from Peru (~2,300 nautical miles away) than Florida (~500 nautical miles). And it’s not even close. According to an official with phosphate producer Mosaic, the Peru route is almost half the cost of shipping from Florida despite its much longer distance and Panama Canal fees.

The reason for this disparity is the Jones Act, a federal law that restricts the transportation of goods between US ports to vessels that are US-flagged, US-built, and US-owned. Those vessels cost roughly four times as much to operate as foreign-flagged ships and four to five times as much to build. And sometimes the ships simply don’t even exist. As the CRS report points out, the most cost-effective vessel for moving phosphate rock is a dry bulk ship. But of the thousands of such ships in the world, not a single one complies with the Jones Act.

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On September 25, the United States Supreme Court reauthorized the federal government’s SAVE program for citizenship checks in voter registration. Predictably, supporters of the Trump administration celebrated the ruling as a “[h]uge victory for election integrity!” (Attorney General Todd Blanche), while opponents claimed the ruling put “millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the admin’s unreliable voter purge system weeks before the midterms.” (CREW)

Relax.

As is so often the case with election law rulings, the implications are not nearly as significant as “hot take” social media commentary would have you believe. There is no reason to believe that past elections were riddled with noncitizen voting. As for voter list maintenance and removal, the ruling simply gives election officials one more tool, but as with other tools, its use is narrowly prescribed by state and federal laws.

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Two months ago, when the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) imposed new Section 301 tariffs on 60 economies for failing to ban imports made with forced labor, the agency followed up with a press release highlighting praise from certain American firms, advocacy organizations, and trade associations—including Big Steel. Among those quoted was Nucor Steel’s chair and CEO Leon Topalian, who said that the steel company “has long supported strong trade enforcement to level the playing field for American manufacturers in the face of global overcapacity and unfair trade.” He added that USTR’s actions “target areas where American manufacturers have been harmed while preserving critical supply chains.” Nucor’s definition of unfair trade driven by forced labor must not include the conditions at one of its Brazilian suppliers, detailed earlier this week by Bloomberg. 

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In most areas of life, when something isn’t working, we look for a better option. In K–12 education, though, children are assigned to public schools based on where they live—and if that school isn’t a good fit, the child is generally seen as the problem. School choice is changing that by expanding access to alternative learning environments. But educational freedom changes lives only if parents and teachers know what options exist, which is why Cato’s Friday Feature highlights the schools, policies, and organizations bringing those choices within reach.

Elizabeth Dean, a high school teacher turned instructional coach in Fairfax County, Virginia, was researching student voice and leadership in secondary schools for her dissertation when she learned about the Acton Academy network. As soon as she realized one was opening right down the street from where she and her family lived, she stopped what she was doing and learned all she could about it. 

“I was very intrigued by the model and excited that it was something that maybe my own kids could go to,” she recalls. Her oldest daughter was about to enter kindergarten, so they put down a deposit at The Village School and figured they’d make the logistics work. 

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The average price of diesel fuel in the US shot up from about $3.69 earlier this year to a high of $6.53 per gallon on Wednesday, September 23. Beyond the sticker shock at the pump, higher-priced diesel means the cost of transporting just about anything by heavy-duty truck, rail, or marine transport will rise, deepening the affordability crunch affecting American households. 

Politico reported that the Trump administration was planning to ban diesel exports for 90 days, while a White House official denounced the report as false. Although we understand the urge to address diesel prices, banning exports will do little to reduce prices in the short run and could backfire spectacularly in the long run. We support the view expressed by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who told a New York audience on Wednesday that banning diesel exports is a blunt tool that won’t work.

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When the Trump administration announced broad, high tariffs in early 2025, importers rushed to bring goods into the United States before the duties took effect. The impact of this import “rush” went beyond causing a brief spike in monthly US imports; firms’ stockpiling of imports helped mitigate cost increases for importers and delay price increases for final consumers. In other words, in the absence of stockpiling, the administration’s import taxes would have proven even more costly for Americans, and consumers would have likely shouldered a higher share of those costs. 

The administration is cracking down on importers stockpiling imports of polysilicon and polysilicon derivatives (most notably solar cells and modules) that will be subject to new tariffs and price floors beginning on December 4. Though narrow in scope, this measure—published in the Federal Register two days after its effective date (September 22)—may pave the way for more expansive restrictions in the future, given the legal basis the administration is relying on to pursue it. 

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